Has the Catholic Church changed since Vatican II? [Part 1/3]

[After much thought, I decided to present my ideas on this topic in a question and answer format (this contains my own opinions and reflections unless otherwise stated)]

Vatican II Council

1.      Has the Catholic Church changed since Vatican II?

Yes, it certain has changed in many aspects. One could say that elements that were warned against in the past had been embraced after Vatican II. Some groups have even concluded from this that the Church has embraced modernism. 

 

2.      What is modernism?

The interested reader can find much information about modernism in the following articles (not an exhaustive list).

Bl. Pius IX: Syllabus of errors 

St. Pius X: Oath against Modernism, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Lamentabili Sane

3.      What are the problematic aspects embraced by the Church since Vatican II?

Those who charge her with embracing modernism claim that during Vatican II,

1. The Church constructed a new notion of religious liberty which is incompatible with what had been taught before in Sacred Tradition.
2. The Church abandoned the notion of the need to convert all peoples to the Catholic faith in favor of dialogue (accused as False Ecumenism) which leads to indifferentism.
3. The Church insists on a newer liturgy that is inferior to the old traditional liturgy with respect to expressing and conveying many of the Catholic truths.
4. There is a lack of mention or insistence on traditional Catholic values pertaining to both faith and morals.

There are other claims made but they can usually be seen to stem from the above general complaints or be traced to a sense of hostility and mistrust that has grown toward the Church for continuing to adhere to the above.

4.      Which specific pronouncements do the above listed changes violate?

(The following is not exhaustive)

Errors condemned in Pope St. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, section III, V and VI, would seem to be violated by the new notion of religious liberty.  

Errors and activities condemned by Pope Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos for an example would seem to be violated by todays call to dialogue and co-operation toward achieving common ends rather than a call for conversion of non-Catholics. 

On the matter of changing the liturgy, many documents and pronouncements by Popes against changing the liturgy as well as theological and philosophical arguments is said to demonstrate the inferior (in terms of expression) qualities of the new liturgy. It must be said however that the validity of the mass is a determination reserved for the Church and the Church has pronounced the new form of the liturgy to be valid. Many do accept the validity while still finding it unreasonable to see why the Church insists on such an inferior and different liturgy when a far superior one exists. 

The same arguments as for the liturgy can be made for traditions. One simply points out that the traditional life of the Church was not simply an arbitrary byproduct but a response to Catholic teaching. Then to simply discard them would not be reasonable if the underlying truths have not changed. 

5.      Yet you do not think the Church has embraced modernism?

Yes, I do not think that is what has taken place. I believe that the Church has simply decided to tolerate a less than favorable situation and the policies and teachings put forth in Vatican II are meant to help deal with this crisis situation in the world. I think there needs to be a distinction between tolerating fruits of modernism and embracing modernism itself.

6.      What sort of crisis would demand such changes? What was different in the world at the time of Vatican II?

One of the best descriptions of the crisis that the world was facing around Vatican II can be found in the document Pastoralconstiutition on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes paragraphs $1 -$22 (a document of Vatican II). But I would like to also describe the following changes which it does not include. 

At the time of Vatican II, the States that identified themselves as Catholic were no longer common and the Church and State separation was taking full effect in formerly Catholic strongholds. What had begun with the French Revolution had spread across Europe and had changed the entire dynamic of society and State.   

The errors that were condemned by Pius IX and Pius X must be read in the context of the Church attempting to prevent a cataclysm where the world will fall in to modernism. They rightly condemned ideas and conclusions that stemmed from modernism such as separation of Church and State, the attempt to strip the temporal powers of the Church (mainly concentrated with the Vicar of Christ), the indifferentism toward all religions and the attempt to consider Catholicism as just one religion among the many. Some of the statements against changing the liturgy (one some legitimate points) should also be understood in this context. For if the changes asked at the time by modernist were granted, the Church rightly feared that it will only lead to a wider acceptance of modernism as a valid school of thought.

But it would seem correct to conclude that modernist thought and what it sought to accomplish had indeed triumphed over the Church in the world. The Church had been stripped of her rightful position and her authority curtailed.  The Catholic States that were once in allegiance to the Pope had rebuked Catholicism to become secular States. Indifferentist attitude toward religion was no longer a fear but a wide spread reality. The wide scale agnosticism and atheism that was warned would result from such indifferentism were a reality at the time of the council. 

Modernism had truly wreaked havoc in the world. (Continued to Part 2)